The exhaustion of petroleum resources and the carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution produced by burning petroleum products (one of the main causes of global warming) make it necessary to develop less polluting alternative energy production processes, enabling the quality of life in industrialized countries to be preserved and the ever-increasing need for energy in emerging countries to be addressed. Indeed, the global energy consumption was 5500 Mtoe in 1971, 10300 Mtoe in 2002 and is estimated to be at 16500 Mtoe in 2030.
It is necessary, however, to distinguish:                energy requirements intended for industrial and urban development, which can be qualified as static (for which numerous solutions are emerging (essentially, solar, nuclear, hydraulic, geothermic and wind power production); from        energy requirements related to transportation, which require storage and transport of energy by the actual vehicle, with the exception of electric track vehicles such as trains and trams.        
For this second requirement, related to transportation, the solutions appear to be less obvious, because the fuel(s) used in the various modes of transportation must comply with a number of constraints.
They must be easily transportable and storable under secure conditions equivalent at least to what currently exists for petroleum products, have a pollution balance (production—use below that of hydrocarbons) and finally be economically viable with respect to petroleum products. The problem is further complicated by taking into account the constraints of a fuel compatible with air transport.
Various methods are taking shape for the production of fuel for vehicles:                the production of biofuel (alcohol, ester),        the use of dihydrogen as a fuel in fuel cells, or thermal engines,        the use of efficient batteries in electric vehicles,        the use of biomass or coal to produce fuel.        
The production of biofuel, alcohol or fatty acid ester, appears at first sight to be promising and is already being implemented in different countries. However, these solutions are not perfect; indeed, the crop acreage necessary for offering energy self-reliance is enormous, and represents more than all currently existing crop acreage. Therefore, these crops are competing with food crops. The raw materials for producing these biofuels are often food products, such as corn, wheat, and so on. Intense harvesting of such biofuels, in addition to creating an imbalance in the global agri-food economy, particularly that of emerging and developing countries, would involve a high risk of famine and significant ecological disruptions.
Moreover, certain modes of production of these biofuels have a very low energy yield and a high pollution balance with regard to petroleum. For example, we can cite the production of ethanol from beetroot, or the production of fatty acids or ester from rapeseed.
The use of dihydrogen as a fuel appears to be a smart solution for a fuel suitable for use. However, the problem of production of non-polluting dihydrogen with a production cost equivalent to petroleum products has not yet been solved. Moreover, the use of this fuel requires overcoming a number of difficulties for storage and distribution thereof in view of its hazards.
The storage of electric energy in batteries to be used in electric or electric-thermal hybrid vehicles is one of the solutions proposed by numerous automobile manufacturers. This solution involves the production of efficient batteries at a low cost, generating little to no pollution, whether in production or recycling. In addition, the problem of producing an alternative fuel persists for vehicles with electric-thermal hybrid-powered vehicles.
To our knowledge, no viable aeronautic propulsion solution based on fuel cells or electric batteries has been proposed.
The use of biomass and in particular plant waste, cellulose or non-upgraded agricultural products represents an important resource of raw materials for the production of liquid fuels, as well as for non-recyclable plastic materials at the end of their working life.
Fossil coal reserves can satisfy the liquid fuel requirements for several more decades.
However, whether it is for biomass or fossil coal, the gasification methods used to produce liquid fuel from these raw materials still produce too much CO2 pollution, which can represent up to 20 to 40% of gases produced.
Due to this loss of carbon in the form of CO2, the production of fuel from biomass by gasification has a pollution balance only slightly better than that of petroleum, which quickly becomes worse if the problems of control of CO2 emissions during biomass production and transport thereof to conversion plants are not managed. By minimizing losses of carbon in the form of CO2 during the production of fuel from biomass, this balance may be brought to or near equilibrium, if the CO2 produced is successfully captured or more efficiently converted into fuel. Indeed, under these conditions, the biomasses would have a carbon proportion equivalent to that released when burning synthetic fuel.
For fossil coal, the situation is entirely different. Regardless of the mode of conversion of coal into fuel, the burning of the fuel will release CO2 from fossil carbon, in addition to undesirable byproducts (sulfur, sulfide) into the atmosphere.
A method of gasification without the release of CO2 will improve the pollution balance of fuels obtained with respect to petroleum products. However, to render the pollution balance of fossil fuels equivalent to the balance of fuels produced from biomass, CO2 capture or conversion solutions must be implemented at the sites where the biofuels are used, i.e. in the vehicles.
An increasing number of methods enabling CO2 to be converted into an upgradable product are being developed; however, very few of them describe solutions suitable for the biomass or coal gasification industry.
Two major types of CO2 conversion processes can be cited:                catalytic methods consisting of reducing CO2 into compounds such as methanol, formaldehyde or formic acid, which are directly upgradable, and        electrochemical gas-phase processes consisting of reducing CO2 into (carbon monoxide) CO and into (dihydrogen) H2 by electrical discharge.        
It should be noted that electrochemical methods in solution enable CO2 to be converted into formic acid.
While industrially upgradable, methanol, formaldehyde and formic acid enable, only with great difficulty, hydrocarbons to be synthesized by processes such as the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process.
Electrochemical gas-phase processes can produce CO and H2 from CO2 gas. Gliding arc (GlidArc) methods are especially promising, although they consume large amounts of energy (several kilovolts per m3 of gas produced). The GlidArc processes described at present often require, in order to reduce the CO2, the use of gas additives such as sulfuric acid (H2S) or methane (CH4). These methods are not described for oxidizing char and coal particles. The additives promoting reactions are always gases. The geometries described for the GlidArc processes make it very difficult to optimize the efficiency of the different reactions according to the flows of the different gases. The GlidArc methods generate so-called non-equilibrium plasmas. No description takes into account mixed methods involving, concomitantly or alternately, a non-equilibrium plasma with a thermodynamic plasma. Similarly, no study has taken into account processes involving plasmas of optical origin, non-equilibrium electric plasmas and thermodynamic plasmas. No study takes into account processes of orienting reactions occurring in a plasma by enrichments with metals, particles or catalysts, thus promoting a given reaction in a plasma.
The reduction of CO2 into CO and H2 is a major technological challenge in the hydrocarbon synthesis industry. Indeed, a large part (30 to 40%) of the raw material (coal, char) is lost in the form of CO2, which makes this industry, in addition to economically costly, highly polluting.
We propose a process and a series of alternative devices, suitable for gasification of biomass and coal, enabling a syngas (CO—H2) to be produced while reducing the energy costs of the biomass or the coal used for the synthesis. Indeed, the energy necessary for the different reactions is normally provided by burning a portion of the char or the coal. In the method described here, a large part of this energy is replaced by solar energy and energy of different plasmas produced throughout the process. The different plasmas used have mixed origins and the electric energy necessary for their production comes from renewable energy (solar, wind, or energy coming from thermal recovery in the device. The losses of carbon, in the form of CO2, are minimized by the use of plasmas of different types (electric, microwave, ICP, optical). These plasmas are used throughout the process as additional means for oxidizing the carbon into CO and reducing the CO2 into CO. The action of the plasmas is amplified by their enrichment with different metals of elements (Mg, Mn, Al, Fe, Si, SiO2, etc.).